Personalised Conversations - The Key to Good SMO

Good Social Media Optimisation (SMO) should be about personalised content and meaningful interaction.

Extensive research undertaken by Razorfish – an interactive marketing and technology company – to better understand consumer online behaviour highlighted interesting relationships between social media and branding, amongst other things.

The study, which was conducted in America, sampled the opinions of 1,000 consumers who were split roughly half male and half female and were spread across four age groups. Razorfish selected this group as they are known as “connected consumers”, meaning they share similar interests and online habits like downloading music and visiting community sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Over a Quarter of People Surveyed Already Follow a Brand on Twitter

Of the 1,000 people surveyed in Razorfish’s connected consumers 25.5% have followed a brand on Twitter, with 43.5% doing so in the hope of discovering exclusive offers. It is also interesting to note that awareness was usually increased about that particular brand in 71.35% of the connected consumers with 65.49% likely to purchase a product as a result.

Similar findings, although not as strong, existed for other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace with 36.9% of consumers who ‘friend’ a brand are doing so in the hope of securing exclusive deals.

The above graphs are courtesy of Feed at Razorfish. For a complete list of the results click here.

The results indicate a growing demand from consumers to interact with their favourite brands online.

However, doing SMO properly is vital as online experience – whether good or bad – affected 65.30% of the connected consumers; of which 97.09% of these confessed that this experience directly affected whether or not they made a purchase.

SMO Could Boost Your Brand Popularity and Personalise Consumer Interaction

Companies considering a SMO campaign will be encouraged by these findings as consumers show a strong willingness to interact with brands through social networks. With the numbers of users on these community sites continuing to grow, it could become common place for companies to start introducing personalised content for enhanced engagement.

Given these people have voluntarily joined a community, it’s likely they’ll be more receptive to conversations.

To speak with a home james campaign manager to understand how we could help implement an effective social marketing strategy for your company, please get in touch with us.